the many networks of Neuroplasticity

The Quadra Project: Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the human brain to adapt to new kinds of learning, a subject studied by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University. In an interview with Clare Wilson in New Scientist magazine (15 May 2021), he makes the passing comment that, “Mother Nature is taking a sort of gamble with humans, in that she drops our brains into the world half-baked and lets experience take over and shape them. Our babies have much less well-developed brains than other animals do at birth. All in all, this has been a successful strategy. We’ve taken over every corner of the planet, invented the internet—even gotten off the planet to the moon.”

Unlike toads and squirrels, ravens and salmon, beetles and trees, this “less well-developed” brain doesn’t lock us into predetermined modes of behaviour. A toad will just be a toad and a beetle a beetle. Within very narrow bands of adaptation they will remain what they are. A squirrel is unlikely to ever check on Mars for better nuts, or a salmon to search the internet for the best spawning opportunities.

But humans are different. As we grow and develop, large portions of our unprogrammed brains are filled with the trappings of culture: language, morality, values, aesthetics, music, politics, loyalties, religion, philosophy, and an incomparable skill in devising and using technologies that are extensions of our bodies and nervous systems. Despite, or perhaps because of all these accomplishments, we are perhaps the only species that has difficulty defining itself.

Who are we as a species? What is our rightful place in the network of life that sustains us? Do we serve any useful function in this system? What is the source of the anxious and restless urgings that place us in opposition to nature’s insistent checks and balances? Does our success in attempting to transcend these limits provide us with a euphoric freedom of endless possibility, or does it commit us to a perpetual enslavement of onerous responsibility?

Our insatiable need for control and security as a fretting little species imposes an existential strain on the easy flow of simply being. And ironically, our long and ingenious struggle toward empowerment may eventually prove to be a laborious journey to defeat.

In addition to our existential angst and all the glorious human accomplishments that support our tenuous image, our ingenuity is now threatening the stability of eight of the nine essential ecosystems that keep Earth’s life systems in balance. We have thrown the carbon cycle into turmoil, along with the nitrogen/phosphorus cycle. Air pollution and chemical contamination are mounting dangers, along with ocean acidification and fresh water supplies. Species diversity and their natural habitats are in collapse—the only part of The Planetary Boundaries Model that is not at immanent risk is the precarious ozone layer that protects our planet from solar radiation.

Perhaps even worse than the ruination we are inflicting on the “Eden” that we occupy, is our inadequate response to the clearly defined planetary crisis. In the UN’s most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, Hans-Otto Portner warned that we are reaching “irreversible” climate catastrophe if temperatures rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. “Any further delay in concerted global action,” he said, “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future.” If all countries were to meet the carbon emission reductions that they pledged at the COP 26 at Glasgow in November of 2021, this would get us to 2.4°C. If corporations were to contribute as fully as they promised, we would still reach an increase of 1.8°C. At an increase now approaching 1.2°C, we are already getting an unambiguous sample of what these temperatures mean, because the scale of disturbance is, in all probability, exponential rather than linear.

In the larger scheme of our planet’s geological and biological history, we are now causing its sixth major extinction, four of which were also caused by excessive carbon dioxide emissions—the only exception was the asteroid strike of some 66 million years ago. The Pliocene, the last of these extinctions from 5 to 3 million years ago, was caused by 20,000 years of vulcanism. To place our present situation in perspective, we are initiating an almost identical process with a mere 250 years of fossil-fuelled industrialization.

History is our invention. Without us, whatever happens on Earth would occur in a spaciousness with neither time nor meaning—in an undifferentiated realm that even our neuroplasticity is incapable of grasping. Nonetheless, we should try to think about how we fit into the vastness of things, and how we can contribute to the order of ecosystem balance. This should be the measure by which we judge ourselves and our flexible brains.

Perhaps our earthly influence and our relative smallness in the vastness of the known universe does justify a certain kind of self-assigned nobility. But it also reveals a vulnerability, and a brain that has been unable to find a meaningful place for its owner in the wholeness of things. This separates us from the company of squirrels, trees and the rest of biology’s family of miscellaneous beings. It also casts considerable doubt on Eagleman’s assessment that Mother Nature’s gamble with us has been “successful”.

Was neuroplasticity one of Mother Nature’s better ideas? We don’t know yet. But the unanswered question should hang heavily on each one of us who is able to think beyond the capability of a toad.

Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra 

Top image credit: Illustration from Lauren Moriarty, et al “Team makes breakthrough discovery on brain cortex functionality,’ Medical press (Credit CC0 Public Domain)

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